Israel Mobilizes Troops as Hostilities Escalate

An Israeli soldier rides on top of an armored personal carrier close to the Israel-Gaza border on Thursday.
Associated Press

By

Charles Levinson in Tel Aviv and

Matt Bradley in Gaza City

Updated Nov. 16, 2012 11:48 a.m. ET

Israel began mobilizing tens of thousands of troops Thursday and extended its aerial and artillery attacks on the Gaza Strip to a third day early Friday, while Palestinian militants mounted their deepest-ever missile strikes into the heart of Israel.

Israel began mobilizing thousands of troops Thursday, extending its aerial and artillery attacks on the Gaza Strip early Friday, while Palestinian militants mounted their deepest-ever missile strikes into the heart of Israel. Photo: REUTERS.

Israel hit the Gaza Strip with airstrikes and artillery shells for a second straight day Thursday and Hamas ramped up rocket fire at Israel, as both sides widened hostilities in the conflict's bloodiest escalation in four years. Charles Levinson has the latest from Tel Aviv on The News Hub.

A video released by the Israeli Defense Force on Wednesday shows an air strike on Hamas in Gaza City that it says killed Ahmed Jabari, the commander of the Hamas military wing in Gaza, Israel. Hamas officials confirmed Mr. Jabari was killed in the attack by the Israel Air Force.

After Friday prayers at the Azhar mosque in Cairo, worshipers chanted anti-Israel slogans in response to the clashes between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Video by WSj's Sam Dagher via #WorldStream.

See Related Video on #WorldStream

The exchanges, which have killed 19 Palestinians and three Israelis, broadened a conflict that had erupted into the open Wednesday. Israel responded to escalating missile strikes from Gaza militants by launching a blitz of airstrikes that day that killed the top military commander of Hamas, the Islamist militant group and political movement that runs Gaza.

It was unclear whether Thursday's troop movements were designed to intimidate Israel's foes or to lay the groundwork for an invasion. Israel's leaders have said they are ready to launch a ground assault if rocket fire continues.

"The situation has all the elements and dynamics that could lead us down the road to a place we haven't been before," said Steve Cook, a Mideast specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's a very dangerous situation, and it's difficult to say what the Israelis should do."

The conflict's course from here on out rests largely with Israel and its neighbor, Egypt—the two nations that form the cornerstone of U.S. policy in the region, but which have seen ties fray in the months since an Islamist government came to power in Egypt.

Conflict in Gaza Strip, Israel

Smoke rises from a Hamas site after an Israeli air strike in the center of Gaza city on Friday. European Pressphoto Agency

U.S. efforts to calm the situation depend largely on Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, analysts said. Before becoming president earlier this year, he was a top leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, which has close ideological links to Hamas. With his election, he inherited oversight of billions of dollars in annual U.S. military support and a U.S.-brokered Israeli-Egyptian peace deal that has defined regional security for three decades.

On Thursday, Mr. Morsi ordered Egypt's prime minister to lead a delegation into Gaza on Friday, Egyptian state television reported. The visit would pose an unprecedented challenge to Israel, perhaps forcing it to scale back its military operations while the delegation is there. Mr. Morsi's activist response to Israeli-Palestinian violence marks a stark reversal from the more hands-off policies of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

President Barack Obama and administration officials have been in contact with leaders of Israel and Egypt—staunchly supporting Israel's operation while pressing the Egyptians to rein in Hamas, officials said.

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A rocket is launched Thursday by militants in the northern Gaza Strip.
Associated Press

"I'm not going to speculate on where this might go, beyond saying that we all want to see a de-escalation of the violence and that the onus rests squarely on Hamas," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner. "It needs to stop its rocket attacks."

On Thursday, a Palestinian rocket narrowly missed Tel Aviv, setting off incoming-missile warning sirens in the city for the first time since Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.

Thursday's three Israeli fatalities came when a Palestinian rocket struck an apartment complex in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi, marking the first deaths on the Israeli side in the conflict and the deadliest single rocket strike ever on Israel from Gaza. Three soldiers were wounded in Israel by a rocket strike later Thursday.

In addition to the 19 Palestinians killed in two days of Israeli attacks, 200 were wounded, Gaza health officials said. Those numbers seemed likely to rise as Israel resumed heavy aerial bombardments late Thursday.

In much of southern Israel and in Gaza, schools remained closed and most residents hunkered down indoors, sheltering from airstrikes and rockets.

Shortly after nightfall, Israel's military began mobilizing 30,000 reserves. Convoys of buses packed with infantrymen, and flatbeds hauling tanks and armored vehicles, rumbled down Israel's highways toward the Gaza Strip.

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People huddle for safety in southern Israel after sirens warn of a rocket attack from militants in Gaza.
Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency

"We are in the process of expanding the campaign," Israel's top military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, told Israel's Channel 2 television.

Earlier Thursday, Gen. Mordechai said military commanders had approved dozens of new targets in Gaza. Leaflets fluttered from the skies over Gaza around midday, warning residents to stay clear of Hamas personnel and installations ahead of continuing Israeli attacks. Army tanks fired shells at targets inside the coastal territory.

For many Palestinians, a more supportive government in Egypt would be their first sense of change from an Arab Spring that until now has largely passed them by. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the two retain close ties.

"This time we know that this is a new Egypt—a new Arab world," said Haidar Eid, an associate professor of political science at Al Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip. "We are expecting the Arab World to do something."

Many Israelis and Palestinians argue that it was the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that helped emboldened Palestinian factions, including some elements of Hamas, to take a more defiant and confrontational approach to Israel that helped trigger this current flare-up.

After nearly four years of calm along the Gaza border, Palestinian militants have slowly stepped up their mortar and rocket attacks on Israel in recent months. Hamas, which in recent years had acted to prevent rival militants from firing at Israel, began to join in the firing itself, in what some observers believed was a response to rival factions' mounting criticism of the group for refusing to confront Israel.

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The days leading up to the Israeli attack saw a series of tit-for-tat skirmishes between Israel and Palestinian militants.

Israel has now struck more than 250 targets in the Gaza Strip, the military said. Gaza-based militants have fired around 300 rockets at Israel since the conflict began, Israel's military says. The country's newly deployed Iron Dome missile defense system, which is partially U.S.-funded, has knocked 105 of them out of the sky, the military said.

In other recent conflicts—Israel's 2006 Lebanon War, and 2009's operation against Hamas in Gaza—Israel intensely shelled suspected militant positions to soften resistance ahead of ground invasions. Israel's latest shelling has been more limited.

Both previous operations were followed by several years of calm. Both also were far bigger in scope, taking a massive toll on the civilian populations, killing hundreds of civilians and scorching Israel's image internationally.

The relatively lower casualty numbers in this assault would seem to indicate that Israel, for its hawkish talk, is mounting a significantly more restrained and pinpoint approach so far to operations than it has at times in the past.

That may help explain why international support for the Israeli offensive has remained strong. The U.K. on Thursday issued a statements of support for Israel. That followed similarly robust backing from Washington a day earlier.

"Hamas bears principal responsibility for the current crisis," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

—Joshua Mitnick in Kiryat Malachi, Israel, contributed to this article.

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